1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for creating a backup of processing environments of an image processing apparatus equipped with a plug-in mechanism to install and uninstall a function module.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical example of an image processing apparatus includes a copier that scans an original to obtain digital image data and prints the image data on a recording medium, and a multifunction product (MFP) that has functions of copying, facsimileing, printing, and telecommunication. Such an image processing apparatus having multiple functions can be connected another image processing apparatus, a server, or a computer via a communication line such as an offline or a network, to build an image processing system. In such an image processing system, an image input-output job can be shared among the image processing apparatuses by communicating image data or control data.
Particularly, in recent years, because of the advent of image processing apparatuses that have multiple functions, each image processing apparatus in an image processing system is equipped with a plug-in mechanism for installing and uninstalling various function modules (see, for example, Japanese Patent No. 3527055).
Such plug-in mechanism for installation or uninstallation of function modules allows optimization of image processing apparatuses in an image processing system according to the user requirements. That is, each image processing apparatus in an image processing system can be customized to perform specific functions according to the user requirement. However, in that case, if an error occurs in one of the image processing apparatuses in an image processing system, then it becomes difficult to find out the functions installed in that image processing apparatus. That makes it difficult to provide system support to the image processing system.
Particularly, consider a case when an error occurs in one of the image processing apparatuses in an image processing system and error analysis is performed from another image processing apparatus arranged at a remote location in the same image processing system. In that case, first, the processing environment of the image processing apparatus in which the error has occurred needs to be duplicated in the image processing apparatus arranged at a remote location. If all the image processing apparatuses in an image processing systems are installed with identical functions, then duplicating the processing environment does not pose any problem. However, when each image processing apparatus is installed with different functions, as is the case with recent image processing apparatuses equipped with a plug-in mechanism, then it can be difficult to sufficiently duplicate the processing environment. As a result, it becomes difficult to provide system support to the image processing system.